


Risk

by Destina



Category: Highlander: The Series
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2002-02-25
Updated: 2002-02-25
Packaged: 2018-04-28 05:02:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5078824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Destina/pseuds/Destina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>First appeared in the zine Futures Without End 4 in 2002. The web version of the zine is still online and can be found <a href="http://mediafans.org/futures4/">here</a>, including the gorgeous <a href="http://mediafans.org/futures4/07risk.html">art</a> X_art created for this story.  Many thanks to elynross and Melina for copyediting/beta/all around editorial things!</p>
<p>Posted to AO3 in October 2015.</p>
    </blockquote>





	Risk

**Author's Note:**

> First appeared in the zine Futures Without End 4 in 2002. The web version of the zine is still online and can be found [here](http://mediafans.org/futures4/), including the gorgeous [art](http://mediafans.org/futures4/07risk.html) X_art created for this story. Many thanks to elynross and Melina for copyediting/beta/all around editorial things!
> 
> Posted to AO3 in October 2015.

Methos was having a bad day.

Every now and then, he would indulge the moody beast at the core of his personality. There were times the very bones of his body ached to act their age, when his body reveled in the knowledge it was an antique--a rare and beautiful antique, to be sure, but ancient, nonetheless. It wasn't possible for him to feel the effects of aging, the quiet creaking and secret pain of the elderly. He was immune. He was Immortal.

He was fucking tired of being something everyone else was not.

He had been tired before. There was that time in London back in 1254, when the smell of the filth surrounding him became intolerable. The refuse of daily living and the stink of slop in the streets gave a quaint comparison to the wretched odor of unwashed bodies surrounding him. He couldn't escape the lice, the squalor, the rats, the bedbugs.

There weren't many good fights to be found in those days, but he started as many as he dared. Pity he managed to win them all.

Eventually he'd enlisted in a Crusade, one of the ones in the middle. They tended to blend together like one giant bleeding ulcer, siphoning off lives and supplies and acolytes, all for a cause no one could truly define. None of that really mattered to Methos. It was more about having something to do, something a little dangerous, a reason to indulge the impulses coursing through him in weak moments. Like a self-perpetuating bad mood, the past returned to haunt him at the oddest times, making him by turns reckless and invincible.

He had seen so many wretched things in those times, but the worst sight of them all had been the emaciated children. Hunger shone in their eyes like beacons of need as they trudged silently through the dry dirt, eyes fixed on imaginary goals destined to bring about their destruction. They never spoke, never played, never fought. They just walked, and prayed, and died.

It had been too much, even for an ironclad stomach forged in the age of Bronze, when the very air was filled with evil. He buried them all, every fallen child he could find, dropping their feather-light bodies into communal pits as he watched the parade of infanticide pass by. He couldn't quite remember if his people, in the place he was born, had committed their dead to the earth, but it seemed appropriate in a civilization built on the remnants of dirt and death.

The so-called Children's Crusade was the end of his brief cycle of atonement and self-destruction. He found quiet places to hide and study until he decided to claim a berth in medical school. It only took six hundred years, give or take a century, for him to decide he had something to contribute to society, such as it was. And in between, he had survived.

During the Renaissance, there were so many Immortals out there, and their numbers didn't seem to be dwindling in the least. As if Time were privy to his plans for simple survival, he was halted at every turn of the road and forced to reinforce his inner sense of self-preservation. With every escape from beneath the blade of another Immortal, the escape gained importance, until it was all that was left. There was only living, with its attendant horrors, its baneful, grasping fingers clawing at his soul, and it was the only thing worth having.

He decided he would live as long as his wits and wiles would allow, and he would damned well attempt to enjoy it. It seemed too obscene to throw away his eternal gift when so many people had sacrificed their short mortal lives without care.

Not many causes were worth investing in--the inanity of war had begun to bore him even before Rome fell--but he'd pitched in against the upstart Colonies when they rebelled against the authority of the Crown. The start of that particular revolution had happened to coincide with another of his extremely bad days--or years, in the scheme of things, when all was said and done--and so he'd been pleased to encounter an outlet for his annoyance. He'd done his best to avoid it, but had wound up face down on a muddy riverbank, head half split open by some sort of crude axe, thankful the blow hadn't landed on his neck. Those Yanks had learned a great deal from the native people they'd subjugated. It didn't bode well for the continent as a whole.

The prospect of losing yet another land mass to ill-educated, stubborn, poorly prepared settlers made him long for sandals and togas and leisurely meals under the shadow of the Seven Hills. However, he was actually quite scornful of such fits of nostalgia, and so his revolutionary bad mood only lasted a few years.

There was yet another moment, another cause invested in, but it would come after centuries of disillusionment. It revealed its astonishing grace and magnetism along the stone-clad bank of a river, when he had grown weary of pursuit and hiding and the entire charade of living too long. Methos simply grasped the hand of another man and offered up his head.

Pity that man was so honorable, so...so Duncan. Things might have been simpler, if he had only known what he was in for. A man could live five thousand years, breathe the dust of a hundred civilizations as they crumbled into memory, and still have no clue what a man like Duncan MacLeod was thinking.

Sometimes, it was a mercy. Seeing inside that Scottish mess of moralistic, pigheaded, loyal thinking would have given Methos a headache, if headaches were within the purview of Immortals.

Instead, it just made him...

...tired.

Take, for instance, the most recent indignity. Not only had MacLeod shown up on his doorstep looking for information he could damn well have wormed out of Joe, but he rushed off afterwards in a fit of righteous indignation, determined to save one of his friends from committing a Serious Error In Judgment. Methos had learned from experience such things could only end one way--in the divorce of head from body, a clean severance of a once-bright friendship.

Duncan had, in fact, nearly beaten down the door in the middle of the night in order to ask for tidbits, like Methos was his own personal bibliography, to be opened and searched for frame of reference at a moment's notice. On impulse, and because he didn't give a damn, Methos had answered the door nearly naked, and it had stopped everything in its tracks.

The universe had ground slowly to a halt, and Duncan's eyes had been lost, seeking a perch, a place to land without seeing. It couldn't have been an easy task, avoiding the things that most naturally drew attention, like the flat of Methos' belly, or the hard nipples exposed to the open air. Or the hard erection that gently curved beneath rumpled silk boxers.

Methos admired the ability to look everywhere but the most important places. It was a skill he'd cultivated with great care over the years, that avoidance of the inevitable. Duncan wasn't good at it, but what he lacked in skill he made up for in effort.

All Duncan's needs and demands--the ones more easily voiced, the kind that had to do with death and Quickenings--had come rushing out, and Methos had stepped aside to let him in, marveling at Duncan's resilience. If he had been met in a doorway by Duncan MacLeod, half-naked and ready to fuck, he would have shed his clothes instantly and blessed whatever gods and goddesses survived to bring him the gift.

But that wasn't MacLeod. It would take a bit more patience, more finesse. Both of those things were in short supply for Methos. And unfortunately, he was having a bad day, and he wasn't feeling terribly patient. So he'd rushed Duncan off and gone out to pick a fight--looking for trouble, as it were.

Taking a risk. Making sure he was still alive, and living life, instead of merely existing.

As he was killing the anonymous man he'd sought, the Immortal who'd been out looking for a pale victim and who'd wound up with the Scourge of the Bronze Age, he was thinking about MacLeod. As the Quickening took him, his brain flashed hot and bright with memories, his own and his opponent's, and he summoned Duncan's face to mind with ruthless ambition as his bones melted and his body flew apart in the hot lightning. He found refuge in his own desires, where it was quiet, and dark, and where MacLeod ruled his fantasies.

Methos had fallen to his knees in the aftermath of that Quickening with Duncan MacLeod's memory-image imprinted on his mind and had gone home with his bad mood undiminished. He needed something to erase the heat at the center of him, to calm the calculated anger in his heart. Something--or someone--and soon.

Methos had taken hundreds of willing lovers, and some who had yielded to manipulation, or coercion, or brute force. Male or female, it made no difference, and hadn't since a time so dim in his recollection he no longer strained to remember it. There were intolerable periods where solitude seemed to be what was best, what was called for, when he could no longer reconcile his needs with those around him. Mortals seemed so fragile, and were gone so soon, in barely the blink of an eye.

Not that Immortal lovers were any better. They tended to linger, and they knew all the same secrets he did, had all the same tricks up their sleeves. He was simply better at most of that chicanery through long practice, and it made other Immortal lovers boring.

Until Duncan MacLeod entered the picture, with his vibrant, passionate regard for justice and for life, and his arrogant assumptions.

Methos loved the spirit of the man, even when he was on the very verge of strangling Duncan for existing. He sometimes engaged him in banter just for the pleasure of watching Duncan's eyes light at the hint of a challenge. It was better than meeting him at the point of a sword. Safer. Preferable. The other would come soon enough.

Once, shortly after they had met, he'd thought Duncan might stop avoiding and start taking. There had been a quiet moment, a time when everything came rushing to the surface and manifested in one look, one gentle touch, a companionable silence over a bottle of wine and shared grief over lost loves. Just that one moment in time, when they had touched each other, and things had been on the verge of changing.

As tides inevitably do, however, that one turned, leaving regret of things undone in its wake, shifting underfoot and leaving only a treacherous landslide of emotion as comfort.

Now, however, Methos could sense he was deep in the middle of his need, even if Duncan hadn't come to the water's edge just yet. Methos paced; he plotted; he raged. His skin was crawling. He would have peeled his identity off and gone in search of something new, as he had so many times before, if it weren't for one crucial desire as yet unfulfilled, one avenue untried.

He wanted Duncan MacLeod, and he meant to have him. But not before he'd tortured him, just a bit. After all, he was having a bad day.

Duncan would be by, eventually. It was just a matter of time, since it was completely predictable that Joe would tell Duncan about Methos' aberrant behavior, his suicidal impulses. The very thought of that conversation made Methos smile widely, like a viper ready to strike. So willing to step in for a friend, that Duncan MacLeod. So ready to dispense advice. No hidden agendas there, no indeed.

But Methos knew differently. He paced; he plotted; he waited. Until the inevitable occurred.

Two sharp raps on the door, and a short pause before a third and fourth. Methos took a sip of his beer and stared thoughtfully at the door, waiting, counting beats between the last knock and the sound of his name being called.

"Methos?"

He smiled self-indulgently. Dangling the bottle between his fingers, Methos slid from the chair, practicing his best saunter on the way to the door, and opened it long enough to glimpse Duncan's face.

"Go away," he said patiently, and slammed the door. A chuckle escaped him as the banging began.

"Methos!" A muttered curse, and then another sharp attack of fist on wood. "Methos, dammit."

After a beat, Methos took a long, tasty swallow of beer, then shouted at the door. "What d'you want, MacLeod?"

"What the hell is wrong with you?" A pause, as if Duncan were suddenly aware he might be attracting a bit too much attention from the neighbors, and he lowered the volume. "Let me in, Methos."

"I'm not in the mood to be lectured to," Methos said. He could virtually hear the wind go out of Duncan's sails, whooshing by him as he grinned at the back of the door.

"I just want to talk to you."

"Not in the mood!"

"Methos!"

Stifling a laugh, Methos hid his face in the sleeve of his sweater for a moment. Finally, he opened the door, just as Duncan's closed fist was about to crash down on it again. "Since you're not going away, you might as well come in. But I'm warning you, I'm not having a good day."

"Well, it's not going to get any better." Duncan glowered at him. "Joe told me you went out and picked a fight tonight."

"What of it?" Methos shoved the door shut and threw himself back into the comfortable chair nearest the window. He slung a leg over the arm and looked up at Duncan, projecting complete nonchalance.

"What's going on?"

"Why does there have to be something going on? Can't I just be in the mood for a little sweat, a little adrenaline, a nice, electrifying Quickening?"

Duncan stared. "So you're saying you went hunting because...you were looking for trouble?"

"Why not?"

"For one thing, you don't fight as well as you used to," Duncan countered immediately, then stopped as though he'd just dropped a brick on his own foot. At least he had the good grace to look mortified.

"And I suppose you think you know everything about me, having crossed swords with me once, when I wasn't at my best?" Methos narrowed his eyes and fought the temptation to hurl the bottle in mock irritation. "There's nothing wrong with picking a fight every now and then, MacLeod. Sometimes, if you don't find one, it finds you." Methos shrugged, hiding his smile against the lip of the bottle as he took a long swig. "Tonight, I chose my battle."

"You..." Duncan's voice trailed off. He put his hands on his hips; a tiny smile quirked the corner of his mouth. "You're joking."

"Actually, no." Methos tilted his head back, looking up at Duncan, not missing for a moment the way those dark eyes traveled the length of his neck on their way up to his eyes. "Haven't you ever simply reveled in the pure pleasure of combat? Felt the...the sensual truth of it all? We are born for this. It's what we do best. Sometimes, I force myself to remember that."

Duncan hesitated. Methos listened to the change in his breathing, the signal of impending, expected disagreement on principle. God, he enjoyed this part of the seduction, the slow revelation, the sparring. It made his blood run hot. Finally, Duncan said, "I don't enjoy killing."

"It's not about killing. It's about domination, don't you think? Conquest." Methos' hand slid beneath his sweater, resting comfortably against his bare stomach. "I've seen you fight, Mac. You feel it too, that thrill of knowing you're the better man, the anticipation of the battle. Or are you going to tell me you don't know that moment, the one that comes just as you take his head and everything else he's ever been?"

"Oh, I know that moment." Duncan's voice dropped low. "It's not about domination, Methos. It's about risk. About taking the chance that maybe, he's better, stronger. Maybe he's taken more heads. Maybe he will have you on your knees when it's all over."

Methos caught Duncan's eyes, noted the half-lidded look, rich with erotic magic. In his mind, he began to break down the odds: how long their assignation might last, once begun; the probability Duncan was really prepared to go to his knees, versus the expectation that Methos would be the one to kneel; the number of times he could make Duncan come without touching him with anything but his lips.

Added together, the whole picture began to take on a sort of attractive quality. In fact, it might be just the ticket to banishing his foul mood. Since, after all, the only way to purge a bad day was to take a little risk, get the blood flowing through his life again.

Methos began to move his hand over his stomach, idly. "Funny you should make that example, Mac. Since I'm picturing you on your knees, right here, in front of me." He touched himself with languorous strokes, aware of the potential effect of that simple action--back and forth, slowly, rising to brush across a nipple. The muscles of his stomach tightened beneath his attentive touch; he restrained an indrawn breath of pleasure.

Duncan's gaze shifted immediately to the slow movement beneath the tan sweater, ridges of knuckles raised like hidden treasure beneath the pebbled wool. He lifted his eyes to Methos' again, and his stare was filled with something dark and lustful, just beneath a gloss of amusement. "Not too subtle, are you?"

"I don't have time to be subtle. I'm very old."

"So you keep saying." Duncan leaned back quite deliberately, following Methos' hand as it emerged from the sheltering sweater and slowly, slowly descended down over the erection pressing up against the worn denim of his jeans. "I'm not getting any younger, either."

Methos smiled. So Duncan was game, after all. Later, when all was said and done, they would play twenty questions, and he would pry into the past, and find out how many men had charted this territory before him. For now, best to take the direct approach. He didn't feel much like playing games. Not tonight.

He let his eyes travel down Duncan's body, taking a lengthy assessment, like a slow cascade of sparks. "So why are we wasting our time talking?"

"Because I didn't come here for this," Duncan said, and it had the ring of a half-hearted objection.

"What did you come for then? Really, MacLeod. I don't need you to tell me when I'm being reckless. I've lived long enough to decipher that on my own. I think you came here because you realized I might fling myself into oblivion without fucking you first."

There. Now the gauntlet was thrown down. Methos waited, daring Duncan with his eyes, intent on the shifting body language before him. He was going to make that expressive body sing, if Duncan would only allow it. He wondered briefly if he were telling himself the truth, if he could bear to sink himself into Duncan's body without exploding from the sheer joy of it, or if it would be his face buried in the pillow to stifle his cries. Either way, the evening would come to a satisfying conclusion.

Duncan crossed his arms over his chest. "You really think I can be manipulated like this?"

"I think you wanted to be manipulated, or you would have let me go about my business without interference. It's not like you've ever been my guardian angel, Mac."

"Did you do this to get my attention?"

"I did it to feel alive. I miss that feeling. I want it back. I've been living half-dead, just surviving, for a very long time." Methos tucked his bottle into the corner of the chair, between the cushions, and pushed off from his perch. "Full of questions, aren't you?" he asked, closing the distance between them with two steps. "Let's answer some of them."

His hands closed around the soft, pliable silk of Duncan's shirt, and he pulled until Duncan's body connected with his own, until they were so close he could feel Duncan's quick breaths and the beat of his heart against Methos' fingers. Duncan reached for him, and for a moment Methos wondered if he were going to have a broken jaw for his efforts. But fingers locked around the nape of his neck, and within the space of a breath Methos was being devoured. He was well and truly captured, and the taste was strong and honest on his tongue as they warred toward surrender, as Duncan took his mouth in the kind of brutal, powerful kiss Methos had wanted.

Methos growled a mixed message of pain and pleasure into Duncan's hot, open lips, panting as his head was forced back and teeth scratched their way down his neck. Duncan paused at the pulse point, licking there like a cat drowning in cream, delicate and desperate all at once. He mumbled something against Methos' skin, something soft and incoherent that translated clearly to the language of Methos' heart.

Methos ducked his head down until his lips brushed against Duncan's ear. He lifted Duncan's head with gentle hands on either side of his face, touching him with his fingertips. "Do you know what the hell you're doing?"

Duncan bestowed another of those lip-swelling, bruising kisses, and his answer was hushed, confident, delivered with a smile against the welcoming warmth of Methos' lips. "Aye. I do."

"Good," Methos gasped, and unleashed his strength, bending Duncan back with the force of his kiss. He was met by equal strength, by arms that caught and held him, that tumbled him to the ground and pinned him there, as his body was covered and his breath was stolen by white-hot pleasure. He writhed beneath Duncan, begging with his body.

Hands planted on the wood floor, Duncan raised himself up and stared down into Methos' eyes. His hips moved, hard and slow, as he pressed his erection into Methos' cock with unerring precision, forcing a groan from Methos. "What do you think of that?" Duncan taunted, dropping his face closer, playing a game of proximity, keeping his tempting mouth just out of reach. His tongue flickered out and teased at the edges of Methos' lips.

Methos closed his eyes, knowing he was falling open, ever wider, becoming revealed. "You're not going to talk, are you?" he said, and his voice was rough, crackling with raw, primal energy. It had been so long since there had been anyone to be this way with, anyone who could stand to feel his teeth and still press him closer, still take him all the way to the freedom he sought.

In answer, Duncan took Methos' hand and licked the palm, and the shiver coursing through Methos ended in his cock. His body was electrified, every nerve ending alert and shining, looking for energy. Duncan's eyes were locked on his; he moved each fingertip between his lips, and Methos couldn't look away, couldn't swallow. His mouth was dry, a desert of need.

The buttons on Duncan's shirt seemed to fly free of their restraints as Methos carefully worked them with his other hand. Duncan stopped him, guarding both Methos' wrists with a casual grip. Once more, he took Methos' mouth in a kiss so possessive it was almost casual. He released Methos' hands and pushed at the edges of his sweater, following its path up the slender chest with his mouth, with sensual bites to flesh that had seen both tenderness and the absence of mercy.

"God, MacLeod," Methos whispered, the words involuntary.

Lazily, Duncan raised his head from where he hovered over a hard, aching nipple. With a wicked gleam in his eyes, he asked, "You're not going to talk, are you?"

"Cock tease," Methos retorted, sliding his hands over bare, perfect skin. He brought his hands to the hard muscles of Duncan's belly, tracing each, and watched Duncan's eyes grow dark. His fingertips played carelessly with the raised nipples, and he listened with a growing sense of satisfaction to the sounds, the sounds Duncan made as he laved each with his tongue, as Duncan threw his head back and tried to catch his breath.

One push, and their legs tangled, and Methos was straddling Duncan, moving down his body like a silk scarf in the sun, merely breathing on the tensed, twitching muscles just above the fastenings of Duncan's slacks. He sat up on his knees, looking down at his triumph.

Duncan merely put his hands behind his head and let Methos look. And he looked back--finally, he was looking. No avoidance, no questions in those eyes. Just a shimmering desire, and a curiosity so open it nearly scorched Methos with its intensity.

Methos smiled and tugged the sweater over his head, tossed it away. "How do you want me?" he asked softly, as he tugged down the zipper over the Duncan's straining erection and lifted it out to his view. So perfect; thick, and curved, and entirely too beautiful to waste inside his body, where he couldn't taste it, couldn't see it. "Do you want my mouth on you, Duncan MacLeod? My lips, around your cock?"

"Jesus God, yes."

"You've had other men." It was a statement, made as Methos bent forward and circled the head with his tongue, infinitely slow, tracing the ridge and the sensitive spot just beneath.

Duncan strained up into that wet caress. "Yes," he gasped.

"But none inside you." Methos knew it, as surely as he knew the bitter taste of Duncan MacLeod on his tongue and relished it. "Will you take me inside you?" he asked, and closed his lips around the long, sweet cock, and slid down it until it was enclosed in suction and warmth, until he could feel the sensation of thickness against and beyond the back of his throat.

"Christ, oh, Christ." Duncan's words were strangled, and his hips lifted, enough for Methos to shove down the trousers and free Duncan's balls to his expert touch. He squeezed gently, and one of his fingers worked its way down with a feather-light stroke, touching a place no one had dared breach with more than that simple touch.

With a trust Methos had never dared believe really existed, Duncan's knees moved apart, falling open, allowing exploration, giving his answer without words.

Methos sucked gently on the feast before him, alternating pressure with sweeping strokes of tongue and hand, and one of his fingers worked its way into the place he most wanted to touch Duncan. In, and out, and the rhythm built, and as it grew, he heard a most miraculous sound--his name, falling from Duncan's lips, even as Duncan reached for him, as he tried to pull him back, but it was too late.

Warm and salty, and better than anything Methos had ever dreamed of having, Duncan was coming in his mouth, and still he heard his name, turning from a cry to a whisper as the pulse of Duncan's heartbeat slowed against his lips.

Methos grinned like a cat lapping up cream, unable to contain his feelings. Not that it mattered, because Duncan was looking at him again, and it seemed as though once he got used to looking he didn't want to stop, couldn't stop, and his eyes were filled with that same joy.

"What are you waiting for?" Duncan asked hoarsely, urgently.

"You," Methos said simply. He withdrew by degrees until he was sprawled indecently on the floor, the very picture of decadence, jeans bulging below his waist. He stood up and shucked the jeans, turning his back to Duncan as he swaggered to the bed with his own peculiar grace, daring Duncan with his body. He was an expert in using that particular tool.

Like a rainbow to a prism, Duncan was there, arched over Methos as he luxuriated in the cotton sheets, loving him with the strength of his body. Methos found himself pressed into the mattress, worshipped by a man who had infinite knowledge of pleasure and was used to applying it with devastating skill.

And he was undone.

Duncan's hands left him uncovered and vulnerable to his own wanting; his lips left Methos craving the tingling, breathless sensation of being known; his eyes left Methos with understanding, and with tenderness, warring inside him.

Inside. Oh, yes. Duncan was offering, and he would not be foolish enough to offer this sacrifice of desire more than once.

Some awkward fumbling, and there was something to ease the way, but it seemed to matter less than he might have imagined. The way was eased by his careful preparations, and Duncan relaxed in his grasp, allowing entry, allowing bittersweet victory.

None of it mattered when he found himself on his back, hands held loose just over his head, and the erotic sight of Duncan MacLeod lowering himself on Methos' cock chased all conscious thought away. Everything fled in the face of that magnificent moment, of Duncan taking and giving control all at once, of his lover flexing his body to take every bit of that cock inside, inside, where there was completion and truth.

They moved together as one, Methos stroking deep as Duncan pushed back, as tension built and was released, as Methos closed his eyes and breathed, a long, slow breath, and released everything, as perfection claimed them just as they had claimed each other. Duncan shuddered over him suddenly, and Methos watched orgasm take his lover. He lost himself in the rapture of that sight, and the world disappeared, swallowed by the oblivion of ecstasy.

There were an amazing number of things Methos hadn't done in his long lifetime. One of those things was to sacrifice much of anything for anyone else. Another was to remain in one place for more than a few months, perhaps years, if he were given a compelling reason.

For the first time, it looked as though he might be about to break his own self-imposed taboos.

He rolled onto his side and studied Duncan, who lay sleeping in the gray morning twilight. Nothing black and white about this situation any longer; they had crossed over into an area where the boundaries were completely obscured by passion. It wasn't at all what he'd thought it was, not at all what he'd expected it to be. It wasn't even close to what he remembered, but it had been a long time since he'd given over his heart.

Apparently, his feelings hadn't frozen over as completely as he'd thought.

And miracle of miracles, his bad mood was entirely gone. Go figure.

Duncan's smooth skin begged to be touched, and Methos indulged his impulse. His fingers stretched out across the broad back and his palm led the way, stroking down as his thumb traced the valleys and curves of bone and muscle. Duncan stirred beneath his hand but didn't wake.

With a careful motion, Methos folded back the sheet and rose from the bed. He padded to the window on bare feet, kicking aside clothing as he went. Errant buttons and strands of silk were strewn about the floor, serving as a pathway of memory. It had really happened; it would likely happen again.

He had what he wanted, and for once, the aftermath proved a worthy conclusion to the anticipation.

Outside, the sun was just peeking over the horizon as dark gave way to light. The world was forever changed, but it went on just as usual. Just as expected. Nothing too drastic, just a cosmic shift in the perceptions of two Immortals, too jaded for their own good.

Taking a risk and reaping the rewards. A little different than in times past, perhaps; a different kind of risk, but just as worthy. Duncan would have his own opinions on the matter; Methos would figure those into the equation. And there would still be symmetry, when all was said and done.

The challenge would be to keep them both alive until the end. After that, they would have to renegotiate.

Soft, dreadful noises drifted over from the bed, and Methos smiled.

There was something inherently perfect about Duncan's peaceful snores providing the soundtrack to the dawn of a new day.


End file.
